IN the course of his presidential speech at the Hindi Sammelan, which held its sittings this year at Lahore, Mr. Gandhi dwelt upon the artificial character of the differentiation between Hindus and Mahomedans, and said the same thing was true of the difference between Hindi and Urdu. He expressed the hope that the natural merging together of Hindi and Urdu would be brought about and remain, that Mahomedans would naturally use Persian, and the Devnagari script, and that both scripts must find a place in the national scheme, but this would not, he held, materially affect the process of fusion. The Mahomedans had already recognised Urdu as their national language, and if the Hindi-Urdu controversy was given up, the question of a common national language would be easily solved. As regards that controversy itself, Mr. Gandhi said it must be given up if the fight against the English language was to be fought.
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